Bookmarks

Alternatives to Using Pure Black (#000000) for Text and Backgrounds

The article has a lot of explanation around why pure black/white is a bad idea, but the really useful thing is a nice collection of off-black colours listed at the bottom of the article.

2 days ago
Including user interaction in website carbon estimates

Clever approach to measuring CO2 emissions from frontend apps: gathering resource usage via th PerformanceResourceTiming API, then passing it through CO2.js. I'm still slightly skeptical that the mapping of resource size to emissions really holds for all types of sites but I think this a more realistic model.

4 days ago
In detail: 1.4.11 Non-Text Contrast (User Interface Components)

Detailed look into precise details of how colour contrast applies to components - specifically how a border around an input field interacts with background colour - and how exactly the WCAG requirements work. My takeaway is that it only matters that there is 1 aspect of the component that is contrasting, as it means that component can be recognised.

5 days ago
Uplevel your managers with Mini-M support groups

Series of posts describing the Mini-M style of meetings, designed to support and grow managers (in a larger org, where there are at least 3 - 4 managers across Engineering-adjacent departments). It's structured as a support group where managers can help each other and develop each other's ideas. I like the framing of it being a "cabal" that work together to implement changes across the org, but question how effective that would realistically be.

5 days ago
Working with stacked branches in Git is easier with --update-refs

Walkthrough of a new option in Git rebasing, why it is helpful for working with "stacked branches" (branch off a branch off a branch) and how to use it. I'm pretty convinced this will be better, as I tend to like working with stacked branches. And as a bonus, it's possible to set it as a default option, so all rebases have this behaviour.

5 days ago
Departure Mono

Interesting pixel-style monospaced font. Surprisingly looks pretty good for code samples.

5 days ago
Practical SVG by Chris Coyier

The entirety of Chris' book on using SVGs on the web. It's a few years old now, but I enjoyed the paper copy and thought it was a good summary of when to reach for SVGs, particularly around icons.

26 days ago
Your Engineers Do Need Communication Skills. So Teach Them about Rhetorical Situations (Part 2)

Great post outlining the concept of a "rhetorical situation", a specific structure that can be used to break down and analyse individual pieces of communication - in the context of software engineering, many of the examples revolve around code review. It could be a useful tool for making communication more effective by ensuring all pieces of the structure have been considered.

4 days ago
color × color

One of those tools to generate a range of colours based on starting and ending input colours. Seems like it has quite a lot of pre-written curves to generate the colours.

25 days ago
The Ultimate Collection of CSS-only Shapes

Pretty much does what it says on the tin. Possibly useful if for some reason an icon isn't viable.

25 days ago
Icônes

Nice & lightweight icon search across a large number of icon collections.

8 days ago
Designing better target sizes

Good article on increasing touch target sizes, particularly for mobile. There's a big grab bag of potential problems and solutions. The first section in particular is more general UX principles, then going onto looking in detail at CSS implementation details.

8 days ago
Robots.txt API

Interesting API to provide robots.txt output to block (known) various web scrapers, including those from AI bots.

28 days ago
On popover accessibility: what the browser does and doesn’t do

Clear description of the behaviours of the new popover attribute, particularly focused on the "accessibility guardrails" that it automatically applies. Will be useful reference for what precisely the behaviours are.

29 days ago
Steal this popover code

Adam Argyle has written the CSS for animating one of the elements with the new popover attribute so that we don't have to. It's pretty clean too!

29 days ago
SVG Icons with CSS Masks

Interesting new technique to use the mask property to link to an SVG to create icons. I think I'd want to test this without the pseudo element though.

yesterday
Two Types of Composition

Nice practical description of composition and comparison of the different ways it can be implemented.

yesterday
Some little ways I’m using CSS :has() in the real world

Useful and practical uses for the new :has() selector

yesterday
All About Career History Interviews

Brief (and unfortunately cut off for non-subscribers) description of a format of a technical (IC or leadership) interview they call "Career History". The summary is that you find 3 - 4 roles in their history then ask the same rough set of questions about those roles with a view to discovering what the trajectory of their career is. There's also a description of red flags to watch out for (mostly lack of improvement and lack of empathy). The structure intentionally doesn't follow questions that the interviewee may have polished, prepared answers for, which I can see the value of but worry isn't the best for neurodivergent candidates.

27 days ago
Internationalize your keyboard controls - Mozilla Hacks

Thorough explanation of how different physical and virtual keyboards (such as French AZERTY and German QWERTZ keyboards) can affect the KeyboardEvent events.

17 days ago